Tetherball, an industry provider in mobile loyalty and rewards solutions, is reporting program growth for clients like Qdoba Mexican Grill and others. The Mexican fast-casual franchise is using Tetherball’s mobile loyalty solution to expand on their existing “wallet card based” loyalty program to reach an on-the-go audience and drive incremental revenue and traffic during non-peak hours. The Qdoba Mobile Rewards program kicked off in early July at several holiday festivals where nearly 20 percent of attendees engaged the mobile program.

“The results we’ve seen since launching our mobile rewards program in early July are greater than even our most optimistic projections,” says Brent Higgins, director of marketing for Aztec Partners LLC, one of the largest Qdoba franchisees in the nation. “We’re realizing a huge bang for our investment buck and our customers love how simple it is to get offers and save money during this difficult economy. The proof is in the numbers—redemption rates for our mobile loyalty program are averaging 16 percent and, incredibly, we’ve seen specific campaign redemption rates at our university locations as high as 40 percent.”

“No matter how strong the offer, we’ve never seen these kinds of redemption rates with paper or online coupons. What’s more, we’re seeing explosive loyalty member growth and the cool thing is, once our customers join, they stay with us—our average opt out rate is less than 8 percent.”

Tetherball’s fully customizable permission-based text messaging mobile loyalty solution allows brands to interact with customers through any mobile phone and allows loyal customers to benefit by earning points and getting exclusive offers. Unlike other mobile marketing programs, Tetherball’s solution doesn’t require downloading of special software or apps, and it works on any phone.

“The results we’re achieving with Qdoba offer further validation of what we’ve been saying all along: mobile loyalty works, it’s the way our on-the-go society likes to communicate. And because mobile loyalty programs are permission based, users get to decide who they want to hear from and get offers from trusted sources only,” says Jay Highley, president and COO of Tetherball.

“We’ve been at this for more than two years and have developed innovative solutions that consistently deliver outstanding results and eliminate fraud—and some of the biggest brands in the U.S. have jumped on the mobile marketing bandwagon with us such as McDonald’s, Arby’s, Dairy Queen, and Dunkin’ Donuts. At the end of the day, it’s all about brands reaching their target audiences in a relevant way and developing a trusted relationship in which there is a real value transfer—mobile loyalty programs do all this and more.”